We are aware some staff are unable to add any users to their courses via the class register. We are liaising with Anthology to determine the cause and rectify the issue. If you require users to be added to your course please contact the DEO Helpdesk digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
Category: Service announcements
Re/Play scheduled maintenance – 6 December 2025
The Re/Play supplier will be updating the EU Mediasite Video Cloud to the latest release during their scheduled maintenance window on 6 December between midnight and 4 am. Extended downtime is not expected, but Re/Play may be unavailable for brief periods during this time.
This is a maintenance release that focuses on stability and user experience. This update includes minor enhancements to Channel functionality, bug fixes, and several small interface tweaks to ensure a more reliable and smoother viewing and management experience.
Xerte Downtime 7th January 2026
IT Services will be carrying out an upgrade on the Xerte Server Wednesday 7th January 2026. This will complete postponed work from 1st December.
Access to both the Xerte authoring tool and projects hosted on Xerte will be intermittently available during the day. This may result in students being unable to view published Xerte objects for short periods during that day. We apologise for any inconvenience this downtime may cause.
The Xerte upgrade will take us to Xerte 3.14. This will bring security improvements, bug fixes, and a variety of enhancements to page templates. There are also improvements to accessibility functionality. You can read more about Xerte 3.14 enhancements in its release notes.
Xerte work partially complete and service is available again.
The critical work on the Xerte server software has been completed, however the upgrade to version 3.14 has been postponed due to other work being carried out across networks. We will identify a time to upgrade in the new year.
If you encounter any issues with Xerte please contact us.
Re/Play Issue: Pausing and Resuming Recordings
We are aware of an issue affecting playback when a Re/Play presentation is paused and resumed during recording. Our supplier has identified the cause and is working on a fix, which will be included in a future version update (release date to be confirmed).
Temporary workaround
The problem appears when users pause and resume recording too quickly. To avoid this, please advise presenters to wait at least 5 seconds between selecting pause and resume.
We’ll provide further updates as soon as the fix is available.
[Resolved] Some Re/Play lectures not recorded
Due to a technical issue with accessing the data on lecture schedules, the Re/Play service encountered a problem which caused a number of automatic recordings to be missed at 9 am today (25 November).
The DEO worked with IT Services and the supplier to address this issue, and the data was restored in time for the 10 am lectures. No further problems are anticipated, but we are monitoring the service and working with IT Services and the supplier to ensure this will not happen again.
If you have any questions, please email the Digital Education helpdesk.
Turnitin AI writing reports update
Turnitin has informed us that they updated the AI writing report on 14 October to improve accuracy while keeping false positives to a minimum. This update is part of their ongoing work to respond to the evolution of generative AI.
How will this update affect your AI reports?
Previously generated AI writing reports will not be updated retroactively. However, this improvement may result in some changes in AI scores between draft submissions made before the update and final submissions made after the update.
This update is automatically applied to all new submissions to Turnitin assignments and to Blackboard assignments with Turnitin enabled. You will not see any visual changes to the AI writing report or its highlighting, and you do not need to change any settings to benefit from the update.
Reminder about AI report interpretation
Although this technology has improved since its release, Turnitin AI writing reports can occasionally produce false positives. This means the report might incorrectly flag text as AI-generated. For this reason, Turnitin results should always be reviewed by subject experts and used as supporting evidence, not as a replacement for academic judgement.
If you have any questions about this update, please message us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Xerte Downtime 1 December 2025
IT Services will be carrying out critical maintenance work on the Xerte Server Monday 1st December. This will involve work on the server and an upgrade to Xerte itself.
Access to both the Xerte authoring tool and projects hosted on Xerte will be intermittently available during the day. This may result in students being unable to view published Xerte objects for short periods during that day. We apologise for any inconvenience this downtime may cause.
The Xerte upgrade will take us to Xerte 3.14. This will bring security improvements, bug fixes, and a variety of enhancements to page templates. There are also improvements to accessibility functionality. You can read more about Xerte 3.14 enhancements in its release notes.
[Resolved] Issue identified with Turnitinuk Bulk Uploads
We previously identified an issue with TurnitinUK.com that affected bulk uploading of files. This issue has now been resolved, and bulk upload is working as expected.
Please accept our apologies for the disruption.
Upcoming Feedbackfruits webinars 26 November 3 December
As part of the support for the onboarding of Feedbackfruits, a dedicated tool to support Peer Review and Contribution to Groupwork, we are running two webinars useful to those who are already using the tool and those who are interested in using the tool, but these people should still reach out to DEO before putting anything into practice for a consultation.
The sessions will be recorded. Please register to get a link to the recording.
We look forward to seeing you!
- Using Feedbackfruits for Peer Review activities 26 November 2025 1400-1500, see details on the registration page
- Using Feedbackfruits for Group Member Evaluation activities 3 December 2025 1400-1500, see details on the registration page